I enjoy tennis – playing and watching. Anyway, the Australian Open is going on now and I was researching tennis athletes with celiac disease.

I stumbled across this article about a D1 Tennis athlete in the early 2000’s. Probably in her sophomore year, she started experiencing significant back pain, chronic diarrhea, and profound fatigue. They treated the back pain with a regimen of physical therapy, strengthening, and NSAIDs. Her back pain improved minimally.

Due to continued gastrointestinal symptoms, they started looking at celiac disease as a possible diagnosis. Doctors did a basic food allergy panel and found she was sensitive to cow’s milk, gliadin, gluten, wheat, and rye but not barley. Note that this was before the blood testing for celiac we have now. Insurance turned down a request for an upper endoscopy to look for celiac disease.

Trainers implemented a gluten free diet and many of her symptoms resolved. They believe celiac disease was the culprit.

Why am I telling you this? Two reasons, even with a top notch team of trainers, nutritionists, and doctors, they may have missed celiac disease in this young woman. Her initial complaint was back spasms, not the fatigue and chronic diarrhea. Tell the doctors everything, even if you think it is nothing, because it may point in a direction and find something you didn’t know about.

Link to article if you want to read it… https://loom.ly/0JNHjDg

#celiac #glutenfree #celiacdisease #coeliac #celiacdisease #basicfood #upperendoscopy #tennisathletes #fatigue